Stylianos Pattakos, last survivor of the 1967 Greek military junta – obituary

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Stylianos Pattakos , who has died aged 103, was the last surviving member of the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974.

The background to the coup which brought the junta to power was the collapse in 1966 of the liberal Centre Union government of George Papandreou. The 15 months of political turmoil that followed provided a convenient pretext for the “colonels”, as they became known, to oust the politicians they so despised.

More specifically, they feared that, in elections planned for May 1967, not only would Papandreou be returned to power but that his more radical son, Andreas, would be a dominant figure in the government. There were also suggestions that Papandreou would be forced into an alliance with the United Democratic Left, which was suspected by conservatives of being a proxy for the banned Greek Communist Party. In such a case a purge might be expected of more reactionary elements in the Army.

In the early hours of April 21 1967, just weeks before the scheduled elections, Pattakos, a Brigadier General, along with Colonels George Papadopoulos and Nikolaos Makarezos, used elements of surprise to seize power in a bloodless coup. As commander of an armoured division training school in Athens, Pattakos was able to place his tanks in strategic positions, from which he was soon able to take control of communication centres, the parliament and the royal palace, effectively gaining complete control of the city.

At the same time units were dispatched to arrest leading politicians and thousands of public figures and ordinary citizens suspected of left-wing sympathies, according to lists prepared in advance. Andreas Papandreou escaped to the roof of his house, but surrendered after a soldier held a gun to the head of his then-fourteen-year-old son, the future prime minister George Papandreou.

By dawn all leading democratic politicians had been arrested, and at 6.00 am Papadopoulos announced the suspension of the Greek constitution and the imposition of martial law. Despite pleas from the acting prime minister Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, the young King Constantine, isolated and surrounded in his palace, reluctantly recognised the new regime – a decision which for which the Greek people never entirely forgave him.

Pattakos and his colleagues attempted to justify the coup by saying that they were protecting the country from a communist takeover. However, the rapidity with which the junta increased the pay of the officer corps indicated that more parochial concerns underlay their self-proclaimed mission of national salvation.

Initially, the junta ruled through a civilian puppet government (though Pattakos became interior minister), but all pretence was abandoned following King Constantine’s abortive counter-coup of December 1967, when Papadopoulos took over as prime minister and Pattakos as deputy prime minister.

The regime had its comic opera aspects. Members of the junta, for the most part men of peasant or lower-middle-class origin, clearly thought that they were defending Helleno-Christian civilisation (with the obvious exception of Athenian democracy) from corruption by secular and western influences. As minister of the interior, Pattakos became notorious for his early ban (later rescinded in the interests of the tourist industry) on mini-skirts (and beards and long hair on men), and for his decision to strip the Greek actress Melina Mercouri of her Greek citizenship. “I was born a Greek and I will die a Greek,” Miss Mercouri famously retorted. “Mr Pattakos was born a fascist and he will die a fascist”.

The regime was unable to build any degree of popular support and those who attempted resistance were dealt with brutally. The widespread use of torture led to Greece’s withdrawal, in advance of almost inevitable expulsion, from the Council of Europe. Yet the junta never came under serious pressure from Greece’s Nato allies – only Sweden went so far as to break off diplomatic relations – and indeed it continued to receive aid from America, which saw it as a pro-US bastion in an increasingly volatile eastern Mediterranean.

Pattakos casting his ballot in a referendum in Athens in 1973Credit:
Aristotle Saris/AP

Through a policy of profligate borrowing and lavish inducements to foreign investors, the “colonels” were able to sustain high levels of economic growth. Pattakos acquired the nickname “first trowel of Greece” due to his frequent smiling appearances, trowel in hand, in propaganda films about new infrastructure projects, shown before the main feature in Greek cinemas.

However, the oil crisis in 1973 had a severe impact. Inflation shot into double figures; students occupied the law faculty of Athens University, and, most ominously, there was an abortive naval mutiny in May 1973.

Under pressure from the United States, Papadopoulos began tentative moves towards a “guided” democracy, initiating a degree of liberalisation, suspending martial law, releasing some political prisoners and easing censorship.

But his plans were sabotaged by a student occupation at Athens Polytechnic in November 1973 which was brutally suppressed, with 34 people killed. Papadopoulos reimposed martial law but he and other members of the old junta, including Pattakos, were themselves soon deposed in a bloodless coup orchestrated by Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannidis, head of Greece’s notorious military police, ESA, along with some younger officers.

The following year, however, Ioannidis miscalculated by masterminding a military coup by Greek officers against Archbishop Makarios, the ethnic Greek president of Cyprus, which Ioannidis insisted should be united with Greece. It was a disastrous decision provoking the Turkish invasion which left the island permanently divided along ethnic lines. The crisis also led to the collapse of military rule in Greece in July 1974.

Stylianos Pattakos was born on November 8 1912, in the village of Agia Paraskevi in northern Crete. He studied at the Hellenic Military Academy at Nafplio, eventually rising to the rank of Brigadier.

Pattakos remained proud of his time in government, claiming that he had brought running water and electricity to every Greek household and taking credit for the expansion of telecommunications and the building of roads. “We enriched the country. We imposed the rule of law. We came up with a new constitution. Everything was going like clockwork,” he told an interviewer. Yet he recalled that when, he returned to his native Crete, a few months after seizing power, his mother had demanded to know who had put him up to “this evil”.

In 1975, following the restoration of democracy, Pattakos, Papadopoulos Makarezos and Ioannides were sentenced to death by firing squad for high treason, but the sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. Ten other members of military regime were jailed for terms of 20 years to life.

Papadopoulos died in jail in 1999, Markarezos under house arrest in 2009 and Ioannides in jail in 2010. Pattakos, however, was released in 1990 on humanitarian grounds because of “imminent danger to his health.”

He survived another 26 years, long enough to witness Greece’s Euro debt crisis. “In our time,” Pattakos told an interviewer from the Observer in 2010, “there was no debt. Not one drachma went astray. The Greeks are not disciplined like the Germans or the British. They need authority.”

After his release Pattakos would make occasional appearances on television chat shows, but he was unrepentant about his role in the coup and always maintained that the “colonels” had saved the country.

Latterly, he lived in Athens, where, two days before his death, he was burgled by intruders as he was sleeping. They overpowered his housekeeper and stole jewellery, rare coins and medals.